Many people suffer from various vision disorders that are often left undiagnosed and untreated. Some visual problems affect a person since childhood, and, if not detected and treated in a timely manner, can result in a permanent loss of vision as the person gets older. For example, amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” is a common visual disorder afflicting approximately 4% of the population in the United States. Amblyopia results from an incompatibility of visual perception between the brain and the amblyopic, “weak” eye, such that the other, “strong” eye, inhibits the amblyopic eye which results in a permanent decrease in vision in that eye. Amblyopia typically occurs in children, but adult cases occur as well.
A typical treatment for amblyopia involves the subject's wearing an eye patch over the unaffected eye with the goal of forcing the person to use the weaker eye to thus train that eye to become stronger. However, patients, particularly children, tend to view such treatment as inconvenient and uncomfortable, which results in poor compliance and therefore leads to unreliable results. Measuring a progress of such treatment can be challenging. Furthermore, a detection of amblyopia and other vision disorders in young children can be complicated.